


Doesn't Realize They've Been Injured

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [11]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 08:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16950225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: “We’re never doing a Family job again,” Len panted as they ducked behind a shipping crate. Bullets slammed into metal on the other side, fast and louder their pursers followed. Santini or Darbinyan enforcers, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t have time to look.





	Doesn't Realize They've Been Injured

“We’re never doing a Family job again,” Len panted as they ducked behind a shipping crate. Bullets slammed into metal on the other side, fast and louder their pursers followed. Santini or Darbinyan enforcers, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t have time to look.

“We weren’t supposed to be doing family jobs in the first place,” Mick snapped. “We had a deal, Snart-”

“I _know_.” But he’d had to. Lewis had caused enough trouble with the Santinis that Len had needed to do _something_ or retaliation was going to fall on Lisa. He should have known they’d turn on him; make him pay in lieu of his sister.

“ _Partners_. The fuck kind of partners are we if you start taking jobs we said we weren’t going to fucking do? We’re in the middle of a fucking _mob war_.” Mick was angry. Of course Mick was angry. Len hadn’t told him about Lisa or about Lewis or about the rock and the hard place he’d found himself stuck between. He’d only told Mick they had a new job with a different crew and hoped Mick could keep his cool once they’d met to set everything in motion.

“You want out?”

The shots were getting closer. One ricocheted off the edge of another container and Len flinched at the noise. Too close. They were getting too close. They were shooting at each other, but they all wanted Len and the diamonds he had in his pocket.

“You gonna kill me if I say yes?” Mick growled as he snapped another clip into his gun and moved around Len to shoot back at the hitters. He’d seen Len kill, had seen him morph into someone that could put a bullet between someone’s eyes rather than let them simply walk away. He wondered what shrinks would say; that he had abandonment issues, call him a sociopath? They’d tell Mick to stay away from him, he was sure, tell Mick to take Lisa somewhere far away where Len and his bloody hands couldn’t touch her.

“No,” Len said, hurt and breathless like Mick had laid a solid hit and knocked the wind out of him. “Not you.” There was no killing Mick. He’d let the other man pull the trigger first and on any other day, Mick would have known that. He’d have known that Len would never have the guts to do it.

“But you’ll fucking lie.”

“I’ve always lied,” Len defended, as weak as it was. “You know that-”

Another bullet shot straight through the gap between containers and lodged in the wall behind. They were cornered and running out of time. They were going to get themselves killed and it was Len’s fault. They might still go after Lisa and that would be his fault too.

He closed his eyes, pressed his head back against the grooved metal, and breathed. He could hear Mick shooting to his left, the loud burst of gunfire that made his ears ring. Think. He had to think. There had to be something-

He’d seen the blueprints for this place; an old container port that had tunnels underneath. Before the Darbinyan family had taken control of the southside, the Morettis had used the tunnels to pass drug supplies through Central where the cops couldn’t watch them. The Darbinyans favored intimidation and black market dealings over drugs, though, and the tunnels had fallen out of use, either because they had the fire power to do what they did openly or because the city had just become that corrupt.

But the tunnels were still there.

He’d seen the outline cut into the concrete floor when they’d been working the job earlier. Seen it. Logged it. Moved on.

“Three down, two to the right,” Len told him suddenly. “Underground tunnels.”

“I’m on my last clip,” Mick reported, still as angry as he’d been since the start, but serious and listening. “Can’t get that far on one clip.”

Len reached into his pocket, fingers slipping messily over the two he still had in his coat pocket, and handed them over. “You’re a better shot,” he said as his hand went back to his side. Heart beating too fast. Blood rushing in his ears. Runner’s stitch in his side. They needed to get out of there.

“We’re between containers and a _wall_.”

“Three down,” Len said again. “It opens back up to the warehouse.”

“Two to the right,” Mick finished at a grumble, but he put the extra clips into his own pocket. “Go. I’ll cover you.”

It at least meant Mick wasn’t planning on shooting him right then. Later, maybe. Len would probably deserve it.

Another shot whizzed by.

Len _definitely_ deserved it.

They moved, slower than Len would have liked, but the stitch in his side was steadily getting worse and they’d waited too long. The distance between them and the Families was too short. Too close. Blood and bodies and Mick was right. He never should have taken this job. He could have gotten Lisa a fake ID and sent her off to a different college. Let her be somebody else and hope that the twitching in her fingers that was so much like his went away before it could ruin her too.

“There,” he gasped when they made it around the corner and into the warehouse. No bodies yet. The area was smack dab in the middle of the yard with its containers and cranes. They’d been in there earlier to take the diamonds from the safe, but they’d been on their exit when Alonso Santini had tripped an alarm like an idiot. If he hadn’t been Family and a Darbinyan hadn’t already shot him down, Len would have done it himself.

Mick pulled the door up with one hand, the other trained on the warehouse entrance, and shooed Len down the rusty ladder. He followed after, dragging the door with him.

And they ran.

They didn’t know where they were going. Len had seen old blueprints of the tunnels back when he was a kid and his father was lamenting over the lost opportunities, but even his memory had its limits.

Dead ends.

A caved-in tunnel.

They circled back as they needed to, but nobody followed and Len’s breath was coming too heavy for him to spare a second to think about why. It didn’t matter. No one following meant no one following. Once they were aboveground, he’d get word to Lisa and tell her to disappear for a while, just to be safe.

His knees were shaking by the time they made it out into a boarded-up store that Len thought used to sell TVs. It was caked in dust now and he leaned against the wall, panting as sweat dripped into his eyes and he wiped sweaty palms against his pants.

“Johnson,” he told Mick blearily. “The safe house. Left corner floorboard in the kitchen, I’ve got a box of fake IDs. There’s a set in there for you with a couple credit cards. Anthony Davies. Lay low for a while.” He swallowed around a dry throat rolled his head towards where Mick was shoving an old filing cabinet over the tunnel entrance. “I’ll fence the diamonds and wire the money out to the account.”

“You try using Jacobs, you’re gonna get pinched,” Mick grunted. “You’re better off with-” But he stopped, wide eyes staring at Len in a mounting horror. “Lenny…”

Len followed his gaze down his own body and… “Oh.” Not sweat, then. Blood. That explained the runner’s stitch.

Mick’s arms went around his waist before his knees could give out and he bit his lip to keep himself from crying out at the way it made his side pull. Bullet. Definitely a bullet. He’d been shot. Blood loss. His breath was still too short.

“Drop me off at the clinic on your way?” he asked with a forced ease that didn’t seem to work with Mick as the man pulled away enough that he could tear his own jacket off. “The one on-”

Mick pressed the fabric to Len’s side, hard, and everything went white.

 

 

 

He didn’t wake up in the clinic.

He could feel the fuzziness and cottonmouth that spoke of heavy painkillers, but there was a low rumble around him. A…car? He was sitting up, he realized slowly, head pressed up against the window. A seatbelt cut into his neck on the right side, but the waistband was pulled loose. Not very safe, he thought, but it was something.

He opened his eyes a little, cringing against the low light of a sun setting, and looked at Mick with a frown. “What…”

“You passed out. Doc got you patched up and hooked to a blood bag while I got the IDs and Lisa,” Mick explained and gestured towards the backseat. “She’s asleep. Picked you up after I got her.”

“Why…”

“First place they were gonna look was with the doc,” Mick reminded him. “You still have their diamonds. I told him we were heading east.”

Which meant they were heading west and south. Mick had said for months that the next time Len did something stupid, he’d get to ponder it in a desert.

“Nevada?”

“As if I’m letting you anywhere near Vegas when you’re the one that fucked up. Ripping off Vegas is a _reward_.”

Which meant Arizona. Fuck. The last time Mick had dragged him to Arizona, he’d gotten so sunburned, Mick had needed to keep two bottles of aloe for every one of beer.

“Mick-”

“Lisa told me what was going on. You should have told me.”

Len nodded slowly, eyes downcast.

“You work with the Families again, I’m out. This shit isn’t what we do. You know that.”

“I know.”

Mick looked at him finally, but he didn’t smile. Still mad, then, but it wasn’t the same spitting anger from before. “Get some sleep.” He turned back to the road. “I’ll wake you when we get through to Oklahoma.”

Len made a soft sound of agreement and closed his eyes. If Mick was willing to drive him all the way to Arizona as punishment, they’d be fine.

The End


End file.
